For Better Or For Worse
by AllyrienDM
Summary: The thing about being an older sibling is that sometimes, you get called in on a rescue mission. The odds are greater than usual in Eureka. For Lizzie Donovan's older sister, though, it's essentially guaranteed. EII verse or standalone, as you please.


__For Better Or For Worse

_If you don't understand how a woman could both love her sister dearly and want to wring her neck at the same time, then you were probably an only child. _

_Linda Sunshine_

_Author's Note: A Donovan family ficlet that takes place in the Everything Is Illuminated 'verse, after Defying Gravity. Doesn't really require reading Everything Is Illuminated.  
_

* * *

It happened on a school day, of course.

_Given_ that it was a school day, Claire's phone was off and stowed in her bag, and it was just after two when she received the simultaneously cryptic and straightforward text message from her youngest sister. It read, **S.O.S. Darwin State Forest**, and it was, frankly, something of a mood killer on an otherwise good day.

With a short huff of annoyance, Claire typed a reply. **Where?** There was a brief pause before the phone beeped to indicate a new message, which Claire opened quickly.

**...there are a bunch of trees?**

Claire narrowed her eyes and hit reply, typing a quick response.

**COORDINATES.**

Claire stuffed the phone back into her purse and strode to her pale blue car. She paused in the driver seat to check her phone, and frowned at the notable lack of response, biting her lip. She had might as well start driving while she waited. Claire turned her keys in the ignition and backed out of her space, before turning out of the parking lot and onto the road that would lead her into the state forest.

When Claire finally arrived at the entrance to the hiking trails, just outside the town limits, she was disturbed to discover no new messages from Lizzie. Her concern - previously nothing greater than a footnote to her annoyance with her sister - racked up a notch. She hiked up her sleeve and exposed the miniature tablet she kept strapped to her wrist (complete, she noted with satisfaction, with the whorls and swirls of sparkles she'd bedazzled onto it last month). She'd been saving this particular trick for a special occasion... But she supposed the situation she was already in would just have to be special enough. Lizzie was so dead if this turned out to be some kind of prank.

About forty-five minutes later, much further up the mountain and into the forest, Lizzie was lying on her back on the rocky trail, contemplating the dappled rays of light shining through the gold and orange leaves above her. She tossed another pebble aimlessly, just before noticing movement on the trail below. She bit her lip, debating the wisdom of speaking up. After all... She didn't particularly want anyone other than her sister finding her here. Claire would be bad enough.

"Lizzie?" Claire's voice rang out, clear as a bell, neatly solving her internal debate.

"Over here!" Lizzie called out quickly, and let out a sigh of relief despite herself when her sister trudged into view. The moment of relief passed when Claire started eying her.

"What are you doing here?" She asked flatly. Lizzie sidestepped the question with one of her own.

"Hey, how'd you find me so quickly, anyways?"

"I planted a tracker in your phone," Claire replied. "And your Tab," she added as an afterthought, referring to Lizzie's own wrist tablet. "You never texted me back." Claire's reference to her surreptitious surveillance was so casual that the words nearly didn't register at all. When they did, Lizzie jerked upright in protest.

"You wha - " she cut herself off with a hiss of pain, and Claire's eyes narrowed.

"Why can't you sit up?" She demanded. Lizzie's eyes slid away from Claire's.

"Of course I can sit up," she retorted defensively. "Why wouldn't I be able to?" This failed to reassure or convince Claire.

"Prove it," Claire challenged. For a moment, neither of them moved.

"I may have broken my leg a little," Lizzie admitted, her voice small. Claire snorted.

"Of course you did," she said, annoyed. "What's the first rule?" She asked, referring to the generally unofficial, if not unspoken, rule system that had developed among the Donovan siblings over their course of their assorted and sundry mischief-making schemes. Lizzie scowled.

"Never leave evidence," she muttered resentfully. Claire raised her eyebrows.

"And the second rule?" She asked pointedly.

"...always have backup." Lizzie answered, her face sullen. "But I _didn't_ leave evidence!" She protested. Claire crossed her arms over her chest and raised her eyebrows.

"You can't possibly think your leg being broken could go unnoticed," Claire pointed out reasonably. "You're going to have to explain how you broke your leg in the middle of a school day somehow." Claire tugged her red scarf off her neck and crumpled it in her hand before going to wander through the underbrush. She returned with four long, reasonably sturdy-looking sticks and knelt by Lizzie's side. Her expression was suddenly, ominously, sympathetic.

"I'll have to straighten it out and splint it temporarily to get us down the mountain." She explained carefully. "Unless you'd rather get airlifted to GD." Lizzie scowled at the thought.

"They're having some kind of... rodent crisis," she said dismissively. "Don't you _ever_ check your phone? Email?"

"I did in time to save your sorry ass," Claire muttered. "Take a deep breath. This is going to hurt." Claire was gentle as she arranged the sticks around Lizzie's leg and lifted it ever so slightly to wrap her scarf underneath, but there was no degree of caution that could have kept Lizzie from clenching her teeth and hissing with the pain. Claire's expression was regretfully apologetic as she tightened the scarf where it wrapped around Lizzie's leg. She sat back on her heels to survey her work before standing up and taking Lizzie's hand.

"Okay, on the count of three - here we go." She told Lizzie, who nodded. "One... Two... Three!" On 'three,' Claire pulled and Lizzie pushed, and then Claire was stumbling under her sister's weight as Lizzie was pulled from sitting to standing, swearing all the way. Their combined force was overkill, and Lizzie nearly bowled over her sister in her journey forward. Claire steadied them both.

"If I break my own leg saving your neck, you're a dead woman," she promised Lizzie, who was panting with the pain. There was a pause as Lizzie attempted to catch her breath.

"Does anyone else even know we're here? Amy?" She managed finally.

"Well, no. It would have helped if I'd had a little more information to go on," Claire said pointedly.

"My phone died," Lizzie defended herself.

"What about your Tab?" Claire asked. Lizzie held up her left hand, revealing the mini-tablet on her wrist. Claire winced at the spider's web of cracks on the glass screen.

"It went the way of the leg," she explained unnecessarily.

"Well, _I _at least charged my phone." Claire informed her.

"Better hope you have service," Lizzie muttered, not enthused by the thought of both of them trapped in the mountains, at night, with a broken leg apiece. Claire sighed noisily.

"Can we just go?" She all but pleaded.

"As you wish, milady," Lizzie jeered. Claire rolled her eyes and began to lead her sister down the trail.

"Brat," she muttered.

"Bite me," Lizzie shot back. Claire flashed her sister a toothy grin which did not lack for menace. Lizzie knew her sister well enough to recant hastily.

"By which I mean, of course, forgive me, o great and benevolent sister, for my impertinence." Claire received her retraction with a snort of disbelief, but said nothing else. The rest of the trip back to the car might have passed in silence, had Claire not happened to glance over to catch her sister's face whitening involuntarily with each step. Claire tried to keep her concern off her face, eyes darting back to the path ahead.

"I was surprised to see Kit wasn't here with you," Claire said, with deliberate casualness. "I guess I wouldn't be here if she was." Lizzie snorted derisively.

"She had a test in sixth period. Said she needed to 'study'," Lizzie shifted her arms to mime air apostrophes, but winced and quickly put them back down. Claire rolled her eyes. Kit must be concerned about this test if she'd skipped out on an adventure to study, especially given the bizarre one-up-manship she and Lizzie had fallen into sometime around the fifth grade. The focus of the odd little dance was to outperform each other and their classmates without being seen to make any effort at all. It had always struck Claire as, well - juvenile. Pointless.

"You know, you and Kit don't actually need to pretend to be smart. You _are_ smart," Claire reminded Lizzie, not for the first time, before adding an addendum: "At least, when you're not prancing around in the woods without proper hiking supplies or punching out your classmates." Beside her, Lizzie snorted.

"Spare me the feel-good lecture, Claire. Just because precious Princess Stark has got your back doesn't mean you're the expert on peaceful resistance." Well. That wasn't entirely untrue. Claire had certainly thrown her fair share of punches before she had mastered the art of handling the cattier schoolmates Eureka had to offer. Still…

"Don't call her that. It's not her fault."

"Everyone dotes on her, just because she's Nathan Stark's kid." Lizzie groused.

"And people are nasty to us because they're jealous of Dad. You know it doesn't mean anything. They don't even _know_ her. And – " Claire stopped. That wasn't her secret to share.

"And what?"

"Nothing." _And if they did, they'd realize she really doesn't give a toss about science._ Jenna Stark, town sweetheart, brilliant daughter of the late Dr. Nathan Stark, wanted to be a US Marshal.

The very thought made Claire's lips curl up at the corners with a tiny smile of amusement.

"The hell do you have to smile about?" Lizzie wheezed, annoyed. "You think this is funny?" Claire, drawn from her reverie, glanced at her sister.

"Oh - _a little_," she taunted. Lizzie scowled, but there was genuine pain in her face, which tugged – really only very slightly, she _had_ brought this upon her own damn self, after all - at Claire's heartstrings.

"The parking lot should be just ahead," she murmured, and they lapsed into silence as Lizzie hobbled the last few yards to the car. It wasn't until Lizzie had settled into the car and Claire was pulling out of the lot that she spoke.

"Any last words before we get to GD?" Claire asked casually. Lizzie tensed.

"I told you, they're having a - "

" - rodent problem, yeah, you mentioned." Claire said dryly. "You really think Mom is going accept that as an excuse? Your leg is broken, Z. Count yourself lucky you avoided the airlift." Lizzie moaned.

"C'mon, Claire, I'm so grounded if they find out I skipped."

"Maybe you should have considered that ahead of time."

"I'm not psychic, how could I have known I would break my leg!" Lizzie protested.

"Why, exactly, did you have to skip school to hike a mountain in the first place?" Claire asked snidely.

"...I needed some time to think." Lizzie said. Something about her tone caught Claire's attention. "Please, Claire, just give me a few hours. If there's something going on at GD, you know Mom and Dad will be in the thick of it. It'll take them forever to get home. All I need is a couple hours and they'll believe it happened after school." Claire bit her lip, debated asking _Are you okay?_ but she knew Lizzie - if something was wrong, Claire was the last person she'd tell.

"Fine," she said finally. "I won't say anything. But you need to get that leg looked at, today."

"Fine," Lizzie affirmed. "Thanks," she added reluctantly.

"You owe me," Claire muttered, though the look she tossed Lizzie was grudgingly affectionate. Lizzie caught it and flashed her a brilliant smile in reply.

"Don't I always?"

"Oh, shut up." Claire shook her head, but she was smiling. _Sisters,_ she thought, exasperated.

* * *

Disclaimer: I don't own Eureka, nor do I own the comic from whence I borrowed the title. No idea where the quote comes from, but the moment I saw it I thought it would suit.

A/N: I hope you've enjoyed this little slice of life from the Donovan family chronicles ;) For those of you who are (inevitably) crossing your fingers for the latest chapter of Everything Is Illuminated, have no fear! It's progressing.

ADM


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